Wasn't that one of Len Lakofka's creations from an earlier Dragon Magazine?
Lemond's Aerial Moathouse, I think is what it was called.
A reason why 4E is not as popular as it could have been
- Thread starter Mercurius
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Wasn't that one of Len Lakofka's creations from an earlier Dragon Magazine?
Lemond's Aerial Moathouse, I think is what it was called.
Your quoting amuses me, as it appears page 142 seems to disagree with all the other pages. It appears to agree far more with me ;p
Prof Cirno, great posts but I already XPed you in another thread!
I liked you world, but to keep vaguely on topic I'll skip the interesting stuff and move onto the simulation thing. Here's my take:
Those who talk about 3E (or Rolemaster, or Runequest) being simulationist are mostly focusing on the action resolution mechanics, and secondarily on the character build mechanics. In particular, they're noticing that in each case these mechanics are intended to reflect actual causal processes in the gameworld.
An example from character build: these games all begin with "pick a race, then pick a class" because logically a person is born into a race before s/he enters into a profession. In fact, however, in character building one almost always choose a race that suits the class one wants to play. 4e Essentials has, finally, broken from the simulationist mindset and put character class info in the book ahead of race info.
Another example from character build: people discuss the illogic of looting giving XP (because why would a person get self-improvement from looting?); a lot of people love RQ's improve-in-skill-you-use mechanic, because it makes sense; a lot of people dislike 4e's all-skills-improve-with-level mechanic because they can't see what it is that the high level wizard is actually doing to achieve self-improvement in swimming.
An example from action resolution: 3E's grapple rules, which begin with the grab, then the hold, then the pull.
Another example from action resolution: a lot of people don't like Come and Get It, because they (rightly) can't identify something that the fighter PC is doing to make the monsters come closer (the trick to Come and Get It is that the first half of the power is pure metagame - it's as if the player of the fighter played a "Your enemies make a tactical blunder" card, a bit like an anti-fate point).
On these mechanical points, I will strongly defend the line that 3E is more simulationist than either 4e or AD&D, but less so than RM or RQ (in particular, hit points are a problem for 3E - the most natural simulationist reading is that they are meat, but this is obviously absurd when a dwarf, however tough, has as much meat as a dragon).
But the examples you have given are examples where the sociological/economic/cultural simulation breaks down (or, more accurately, doesn't even get off the ground). In this dimension of simulations, which D&D has never really tried to model mechanically (other than the stronghold rules in earlier editions, which really only cover a very small part of the world as a whole), I would say that no edition of D&D has ever had simulationist aspirations. It's a marked contrast with Classic Traveller, for example, which does try to take a simulationist approach to at least some of this stuff, by having planet building rules right alongside the character building rules.
So, when you say:
I think you are just misinterpreting. The simulations is in the mechanics, and D&D doesn't have world-building mechanics.
Why is there no demand for world-level simulationist mechanics in fantasy RPGs? Well, first, there is some (eg Magical Medieval Society). But second, I think most fantasy RPGers don't have such strong intuitions about how society should be modelled as how personal development or interaction should be modelled. And third, the world stuff is mostly in the hands of the GM, so from the point of view of the players, whether the GM does it via simulationist techniques or just makes it up off the cuff based on pure metagame considerations is opaque to them. So this sort of simulation moslty isn't going to be part of the shared gaming experience.
Where I think there is a demand for simulationism on the world side of things, and what I'm trying to get at in my description of "just in time" GMing and 4e's suitability for it, is what we might call the "reality" of the world, not in the sense of its resemblance to the actual world, but in the sense of its existence independent of actual playing the game, as a self-standing entity that it makes sense for the players to envisage exploring.
I think there is a lot of demand for this sort of simulation, even when there is complete indifference to Traveller-style world-building simulation. In my view, the poster child for "not interested in Traveller-style sociological simulations, but I insist upon there being a world independent of my game table that I, as a player, can explore" is the Forgotten Realms. In my view that world has less than zero credibility or interest from the point of view of sociology or history (contrasting very markedly with, for example, Tolkein's Middle Earth with it's interesting theory of linguistic development, or with Stafford's Glorantha and it's interesting theory of sociology of religion). But there seems to me to be little doubt that it's fans really do regard it as having an existence in some sense independent of its authorship, and certainly independent of their RPGing in it, so that for them the pleasure of RPGing really can come from exploring the Realms.
pawsplay
Hero
I neither agree nor disagree with the DMG. I'm just pointing out that the DMG is agreeing with you, while you claimed it didn't. You stated D&D never took into account the effects of magic on a realistic world-setting; the DMG says to take into account the effects of magic on a realistic world setting. So what you said about D&D 3e is false. That level of simulation is explicitly addressed by 3e.
pawsplay
Hero
Checking the goalposts here.
You said this:
The 3e DMG says this:
To me it looks like you lose the point. 3e was meant to "portray" an "actual setting" considering the "implications of magic," specifically a "fairly realistic world" in which magic could "alter" "anything."
Ready to cry uncle?
You said this:
The 3e DMG says this:
To me it looks like you lose the point. 3e was meant to "portray" an "actual setting" considering the "implications of magic," specifically a "fairly realistic world" in which magic could "alter" "anything."
Ready to cry uncle?
1st ed AD&D specifically eschews taking a stand on whether the game world is caste-based or not, and on whether it is feudal or not. I don't know about 2nd ed AD&D. I don't remember much on feudalism in the 3E PHB - I can't remember the DMG on this point, but the overall environment doesn't seem especially feudal to me. Other than the paladin class, D&D's medievalism has seemed to me to be defined by some basic technological tropes - swords, armour, horses, etc - rather than by its social or political structures, all of which tend to be wildly anachronistic in the way Prof Cirno pointed out upthread.
I don't get this. Star Wars is based in part on a samurai film, and in part on a loose recreation of the transition of the Roman Republic into the Empire. 4e doesn't especially remind me of Star Wars, but if it did that would certainly be consistent with a pre-modern feel to the government.
Well, Conan's world is a pastiche of a lot of times and places, including the approximately medieval (Aquilonia and its neighbouring kingdoms).
OK. Most of the places my PC's could reach are "empty", in the sense that I don't know what's there. If they did decide to go there, then I'd make some decisions based on a combination of easiness and probable interest to me and the players.
Stats? What are these things called stats? I don't think I even gave him a name!
What happened is this: I am using a map (from Night's Dark Terror). On the map is a town (called Kelven). The PCs all started there, in a tavern, and got recruited for a job. One of the players named the tavern in his PC background - I can't now remember what it was called, but it was on the docks and served dwarven ale. After resolving the recruitment scenario, where the PCs negotiated for slightly higher pay, we then cut to the next day and the PCs hopping on a boat to go upriver. Since then, the PCs have returned to Kelven for one game week in two real-time years of play. When they went back, they bought some stuff, sold some stuff, and decided to talk to the ruler about the possibility of hobgoblin attacks from the north. At that point I decided that (i) Kelven does have a ruler, and (ii) he doesn't have much money or economic capacity, because the fall of Nerath has depressed trade and production, but (iii) a lot of what he does have is quite valuable, because he is the inheritor of Nerathi loot. (I was thinking here of high medieval Rome, which was a shadow of its former economic self, but in which everyone and their dog seems to have been able to find some lovely marble if they went out looking for it.) We then had a brief paraphrase of the audience with the ruler - we didn't actually play it out in 1st person style - and I explained that at the end of the audience he gifted the PCs one riding horse with very high quality tack and harness.
You now know as much as I and my players do about the ruler of Kelven in my game. If more information - like a name - becomes necessary down the track, I'll work it out then!
That there was a ruler never came up until the players wanted to meet him. Likewise the other stuff. I assure you I'm not lying. I really did make that stuff up while sitting at the gaming table, looking my friends in the eye, and telling them stuff that their PCs are remembering or experiencing!
This is actually not true. You don't need to know where things are. You just have to know that there is enough space in the area in question that they can all fit in. And you can handwave the distances (if they come up) as minutes, hours or days of travel.
In my previous game, the PCs (i) ruled a harbour town, (ii) had control of a lighthouse built on an island of that town, (iii) knew that the island was in fact the petrified body of a dead god, whose face you could see if you dived underwater, and from whose eyes otherworldly entities occasionally emerged, (iv) set up various rendezvous points outside the town, (v) did deals with spirits living some distance outside the town, (vi) visited the estate of a noblewoman living some distance outside the town, (vii) had fights and chases on boats in the harbour and in the water of the harbour, etc etc. (For anyone interested, this was a high level Freeport trilogy variant.)
I had no no map showing the depth or topography of the harbour, no picture of the face or eyes of the god, no map of the surrounds of the town, and only a pretty low-resolution map of the town and harbour (from the module). No continuity problem ever arose. If one had threatened, I might have drawn a map, but in several years of play none was needed.
I can assure you that I have my stuff together. Ask me about the mythical history of the elven gods and I can tell you probably more than you want to know. This is the stuff I need to run my game. I don't need to know whether or not some minor plot point town has a ruler.
Heck, one key plot point in my game is the ruined city of Entekash from which the PC wizard hails (this city was introduced into the gameworld by the player of that PC, when the PC backstory was written up) and I don't even know where on the map that is - although I've got a general notion that it's north of the Black Peaks and east of the area where most of the play is happening at the moment.
While it's possible that something more precise will eventually need to be worked out, I wouldn't be surprised if we get to the point where the PCs are exploring Entekash on the Plane of Ruined Cities in the Abyss (from Demonomicon) before we've got to the point where Entekash is placed on the map.
Whereas I do this all the time. As I quoted Paul Czege upthread, "I frame the character into the middle of conflicts I think will push and pull in ways that are interesting to me and to the player. I keep NPC personalities somewhat unfixed in my mind, allowing me to retroactively justify their behaviors in support of this." What an NPC knows is something that I'll resolve in the course of play in order to help me push and pull.
What is the creation myth for the world of 3E? Neither the PHB nor the DMG tells me. The 1st ed PHB has a very evocative two-page spread on the planes, but it doesn't tell me who created them.
4e, in having a creation myth which continuing consequences that are set up as part of the action that the PCs can expect to be engaged in is actually quite distinctive among the various editions of D&D. And the gods are doing a lot before you get to the epic tier - they are providing ideals for the PCs, they are the background to a range of antagonists, from Orcus cultists to Bane-ite hobgoblins, and they are the source of power for invokers, warlocks and others. They are utterly central to my game, which is just about to move from heroic to paragon tier.
You seem to be saying that mythical history of the campaign world is a minor detail, and an ingame answer to the problem of child-killing paladin PCs is a major detail. At the same time, you're telling me that my game, which prioritises mythic history over minutiae and doesn't really need to worry about mass-murdering paladins (the issue has never come up) is a hack-n-slash game?
I don't get this at all.
As far as I'm concerned you may, and I probably should have let your reply stand on its own, but I couldn't help myself from having a stab at it also.
Aldarc
Legend
Shadzar & Pemerton: I'm only loosely following the discussion between you two, but it seems to me that you are discussing something that's quite independent of the game system itself, but merely a preference of DM style. I just fail to see how some of these gaming decisions - such as whether or not the DM prepared in advance whether Iyour had a ruler or not, or who that ruler was - is somehow dependent on the game system. Am I reading the conversation incorrectly or is there some other matter at hand?
Aberzanzorax
Hero
Refresh my memory paws... did the 3e books give any substantial and specific advice on how to actually do that? Wasn't 3e the same gonzo fantasy in Medieval drag as the prior editions?
Neonchameleon
Legend
The answer is simple. "Push 2" is a fast way of writing "Throws the target ten foot backwards". And tossing people back like that is pure cinematics.
Indeed. The problem with disarmed (and for that matter its permanent brother Weapon Sundered) is it's such a variable effect. Normally in melee combat it's a fight ender. (Think Inigo Montoya vs The Dread Pirate Roberts). Also it's a monster block redraw - and what sort of monster makes a huge difference to the effect. In short it's going to be situational, clunky, and have a massively variable effect.
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